Alex had been hoping that Quinn could stay with her when she was questioned again by the state troopers. But sitting in the privacy of Quinn’s office, it was just her and Trooper Kurtz. He tossed his brimmed hat on the desk, so at least she could see his face and eyes better.
“I’m especially interested in Valerie Chambers’s comments and actions when you spent time with her the day she died.” He glanced down at his notebook. “That would be both when she visited the lodge gift shop and in your car on the way to the tracking and survival camp.”
She wanted to be careful what she said. People could testify that she disappeared for a while—in the area of the murder—when she went to find Mary for Sam. No doubt law enforcement didn’t rule anyone out until they had to.
Kurtz had rolled Quinn’s chair out from behind the desk and had her pinned in where she sat on the couch. She gripped her hands together, then loosened her fingers as she did not want to seem overly nervous.
Before she could begin, he added, “I realize you have been through other tough times—trauma—than this, Alex. Quinn made the point that your privacy should be protected since you have escaped a dangerous domestic situation. We will do what we can to protect your identity, but I can’t promise you that information won’t leak out through the media. The last time we had a bear mauling death, it made big news, even in the lower forty-eight news cycles.”
“I appreciate anything you can do. And yes, the fear of discovery—by someone from my previous situation—does worry me. But as for Val, she did seem to flaunt her love of the good life, city life, California life, so I wondered from the start why she wanted Chris Ryker, who evidently loved working in the wilds. She had dreams of taking him to LA, of his working in Hollywood movies. She didn’t read him very well.”
“And from other interviews, I take it almost everyone, especially Chris Ryker, knew she was not a fan of Alaska.”
Her eyes widened. Was that a hint that Ryker was under suspicion? Maybe Val had pushed him too far, tried to bribe or pressure him to leave and he had lost control. But if he had bear claws in his backpack—and Val had mentioned he collected such items—had he ditched them now? Could he, for some reason, have scratched the wood outside her window?
Alex cleared her throat and went on. “As to what she spoke about in that store visit, it was her love for Los Angeles, the lifestyle there. She bought some bear bells, the ones she had strung around her neck when I found her, and talked about the fact they were cute and reminded her of the USC Bruins. You saw that bear sweatshirt she had on. How ironic, bear bells and a bear outfit, and then a bear—or, as Quinn says, someone wanting to make it look like a bear—killed her.”
“By the way, my partner, Hanson, got a search warrant so we could take a look at Ryker’s room in town where the victim was staying with him. Did she reference anything about items she or he had there?”
Alex frowned, concentrating, remembering. So much had happened. “She did say she was annoyed at how he collected local memorabilia, but I’m pretty sure those bear bells were not for him.”
“Memorabilia, such as?” he said, his pen poised again. “It will help us to know what we’re walking into.”
“She did say,” Alex told him, speaking slowly, “that his camera cost twenty-eight thousand dollars.”
Kurtz’s eyebrows lifted before he frowned as he wrote her words down. “So Ryker must have confided in her. Maybe confided too much, because he told me he wasn’t leaving ‘this gig,’ as he put it, to go to California.”
She almost blurted out that she’d heard Val and Ryker argue just before everyone went out to the forest. But she might as well have because it was as if the trooper had read her mind.
“Did you hear Chris Ryker and Valerie Chambers have a disagreement that afternoon, just before everyone went outside? Several others reported they did, and Ryker admitted that.”
“I heard them from a distance. Although they were not talking quietly, I don’t know what it was about.”
“Quinn and Brent Bayer are telling me she was fed up here and he wouldn’t leave—no breaking news there, only corroboration.” He reached back for his hat on the desk. “Both Mary and Sam Spruce brought that argument up right away—even stressed it—so I was surprised you didn’t.”
“Of course, if Ryker planned to harm her, I doubt if he would have had a public falling-out with her right before,” she said, but she was thinking that Mary and Sam seemed set on emphasizing Ryker as a suspect, even though they’d wanted to defend him earlier as part of their team. She realized she had just given an opinion again, but he nodded.
“Many murders are crimes of passion, not reasoning,” Kurtz said. “Such is life—and death. Thank you for the information on this and your perspective, and I may need to question some witnesses here again, including you.”
“How did it go?” Quinn asked when they were alone again in his office.
“All right. It seems they may be thinking Ryker, though.”
“I guess they always look at the partner first, the husband, the boyfriend, fiancé—lover.”
She nodded, and they were silent for a moment. He wondered if she was thinking of her former fiancé.
Their gazes met again before he looked away. He wanted to hold her, but he didn’t want to press, to take advantage of this tragedy. “Want to sit out on the porch for a few minutes before bed? Or if you’re beat, you can have the bathroom first and lights out. Brent’s on his phone to New York in the guest bedroom and says he’s going to sleep after that. I swear, he’s asked as many questions as the troopers.”
“Did you get what you need out of your bedroom before I take it over tonight?”
“I grabbed a few things before you even agreed to stay there.”
“You were sure I would?”
“It was the best thing for you to do, and you’re a smart woman.”
“Thank you for that. Sometimes I wonder. I’ll go get Spenser and bring him along.”
Alex put Spenser on his leash and went to the porch entrance. Quinn had arranged two of the several lawn chairs tight together for them. Since Spenser could not get out, she just dropped his leash, but he still stayed at their feet.
When they sat, Quinn took her hand. The night, noisy with the rustling of leaves and owl sounds, reached in. Spenser, thinking he was their guardian, began to patrol the edge of the ceiling-to-floor screens, dragging his leash.
“Sorry you’re caught up in this. What a mess,” he said. “Poor, unpopular Val, fish out of water—then no water to even breathe.”
“Yes. As for me, I’m used to being in a mess. I was in a mess before I even knew it.”
“With your fiancé?”
She nodded. Even in the dark, she could feel him watching her intently. “I must have thought I was living a dream, and it turned out to be a nightmare.”
He squeezed her hand. “We have that in common. If you know tough times, you recognize when things are better, even good.”
“I agree. I’m—at least before today—determined to get there.”
“What we don’t have in common, we could make up for. Enjoy each other, do things together, support each other, maybe do more than just get intrigued by and like each other. Want to give it a try—more of a try than we’ve been able to so far—and now with this chaos?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“That’s all I needed to know. I second that.”
He turned even more toward her and pulled her closer. He tilted his head so that their lips met, slanted, melded. As tired and distressed as she was, she felt that kiss clear down into her belly and beyond. It was so different from how she felt and responded to Lyle, so...trusting and warm. Well, hot, too. She felt she could give and take here, not just give, give, give...
The kiss seemed as endless as the forest and night beyond. He tugged her to her feet, and they kept kissing, caressing. Thinking they were going somewhere, Spenser came over and rubbed against their ankles. They ignored him. He went around them until they realized he’d tied their ankles together with his loose leash.
“Your little friend,” Quinn whispered, “is giving us a message. It’s his version of a lovers’ knot. Listen, sweetheart, I don’t mean to give you the wrong idea,” he whispered in her ear as they held tight together. “We both need our sleep tonight. But I hope that—”
He stopped speaking and froze. She gripped him closer. A sudden sound, a distant voice, shrill, nasal... It seemed androgynous, neither male nor female, and that sent shivers through her.
Quinn stepped out of the leash, set her back and stood between her and the screen.
“Not an owl?” she asked, whispering.
“No way.”
“It sounds kind of like what we heard out by the lake.”
“I’ve never heard it this close, not around here.”
In the dark, they stood, staring out into the windy night. Suddenly, he pushed her back a bit more, then gripped her wrist hard. Spenser growled.
A dark form passed between them and the nearest cedar tree next to the stockade fence. Someone moving smoothly through the darkness inside the compound, and then that cry again, this time followed by the familiar voice that became slowly distant. To Alex’s amazement, Spenser seemed too cowed to bark, but continued to growl.
“I’m going out,” he whispered.
“No. Not alone, and—”
“Do you believe in earthly spirits and ghosts?”
“No, but—Quinn, maybe that was Mary. Sam said she has insomnia, walks in her sleep, and I swear, she’s haunted by the losses of her people.”
“Sam says he only finds her out on their porch. It’s someone else.”
“Can you call Sam?”
“Turns his phone off at night.”
“Then let’s go wake him—see if she’s there. People sleepwalking can do lots of things they don’t remember. Quinn, she’s pregnant and could hurt herself.”
“Okay, lock Spenser in the bedroom. To Sam’s house, then I may go beyond.”
She wanted to say, I’ll go with you if you go into the woods, but the words wouldn’t come out.